Patronus
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: Megatron hoped to never see his once-patron of the gladiatorial arena again. Or at least, to have more warning than this; OR, here's how you could bring Rung from the comics into the TF:Prime setting. A discussion of omnipotence and free will.
1. They Walk Among Us

So last fall I got into TF. I've got some TF stories that I thought I might as well bring over here, since I've got them and all. First up is my attempt to smash Rung from MTMTE into TFPrime. Let's go.

* * *

Patronus: They Walk Among Us

Knockout sashayed onto the bridge at a 10.0 on the starscream smugness scale (where a ten represents Starscream reminding anyone who will listen that he once assassinated the entire sitting senate and a one represents Optimus Prime's complete and utter lack of irony while pontificating on a battle field). Knockout's usual level, for clarification, rested at the comfortable simmer of an 8.5.

His glittering pedes beat out a leisurely swagger as the containment unit, its outside blackened like a fired coffin, dragged behind him kicking up sparks. Soundwave regretfully resigned himself to a fifteen percent reduction in productivity and made a note to have the drones buff that out later.

"My liege," Knockout said, addressing Megatron at the captain's station, "I come bearing a gift for you, our magnificent leader, which I present with no small amount of _humble_ pleasure."

As was ever the case, the only people who bothered citing their humility were those currently riding the highest possible smugness quotient. As Megatron turned from his station, Soundwave quickly flashed a 10.0 [star] across his faceplate, and watched the minute flicker of amusement in his liege's bearing.

"Yes, Knockout," Megatron drawled, "what is it, then? Another quaint human vehicle for your _thorough_ private inspection?

Knockout cleared his vocoder uneasily. "Ah," he said, "no, my lord. As a matter of fact, I've captured you an autobot!"

In the flare of surprise that washed through the bridge's collective EM field, Knockout threw open the containment unit and settled back with one servo on his hip, examining the fine-tipped digits of his other. "Strange little thing," he said, "I snatched him off the side of a mountain, easy as you please. Of course he was no match for my stunning swiftness."

Soundwave drifted closer. A new autobot in the Prime's vanguard spelled an unpleasant shift in the tide of engagement. For every single autobot on the field of play, Starscream had typically allotted five vehicons to counter. His various replacements had played with the numbers, but Starscream's efficiency in that regard had yet to be eclipsed. No one protected their assets quite like Starscream.

Megatron stiffened. He had been approaching the unit at a leisurely pace, allowing Knockout to wax eloquent about his own speed and the incapability of autobot road frames to counter it, while he got a look at what was inside. But the moment he drew within reach, his armor contracted around his protoform like Soundwave had only seen it do a handful of times since Megatron was a fresh faced gladiatorial recruit still learning the shape of the arena.

"Get him out," Megatron said, in a low, dangerous tone.

"I—pardon?" Knockout said.

Megatron whirled. "Get him out!" he roared, swiping a claw through the air. "Quickly, you imbecile, before he—"

A delicate white hand clasped the edge of the unit, and Megatron went stock still. Soundwave had barely a moment to process the pall of silent dread as a second hand came up, and the presumed-autobot levered himself upright in the unit with a small hum of effort.

Megatron slowly pivoted. "_Rung_," he said, "what a _pleasure_ it is to see you, after so long."

Soundwave disengaged laserbeak's activation protocols and straightened. After the last time they had seen each other, it was understandable that Megatron would be uneasy. Soundwave, of course, did not deem it necessary to panic yet. But then Megatron's ruthless clarity of vision had always become jumbled when Rung stepped into the frame. Even so it was disorienting—to see a once familiar face in so alien a setting, to find so much of oneself changed, and yet the very shape of one's memory unaltered by time. Rung adjusted his spectacles.

Still barely as large as a two-wheeler, the millennia and the war did not seem to have changed Rung in the slightest. No hint of integrated weaponry in his slight frame. No sign of a single patched component.

"My dear Megatronus," he said, and lifted a hand, which Megatron rushed to take. The Decepticon general carefully guided Rung to his pedes, one steadying palm against his waist. As he stood, Rung gave the bridge a vague but interested once over, eyes at last lighting on Soundwave. "Ah!" he said, "And young Soundwave. Still thick as thieves I see."

For the first time in a long time, Soundwave regretted his vows. He flashed a [smile] at Rung and watched as Rung's countenance drifted from curiosity to concern.

"Are you quite alright, my dear?" he asked.

"Soundwave has taken a vow of silence," Megatron quickly filled in, "it's all perfectly—perfectly normal. Yes. But what about you, is there anything I can do for you? Please, you're welcome to anything my ship can offer—"

"Your ship!" Rung said, with mild surprise. "Is this _your_ ship? My my, you have gotten up in the world haven't you? I had no idea you'd made such an advancement. You must be very proud."

He said this with such sincere warmth than several vehicons immediately started shifting uncomfortably in the navigation pit. Knockout gave the whole scene a dumbfounded stare.

"I haven't seen you since that unpleasantness in my office after the fifty-fourth championship tournament. How are you doing? Have you found a primary practitioner? I haven't heard from you in so long."

"Oh," Knockout said, visibly relieved to have something to contribute, "I'm his—"

"_Knockout_," Megatron snapped, from between denta gritted into something approximating a smile, "please leave."

Hopelessly bewildered, Knockout's mouth silently formed the word "_please?"_

Soundwave took stock of the situation. The vehicons were growing restless with confusion, and Knockout was almost certainly about to say something that would earn them all Rung's profound disapproval, and aside from all that, the chances of anything beneficial to the war effort being accomplished while Rung was on the ship were rapidly dropping.

He commed Megatron. _Soundwave: escort Rung to mess hall._

"A fine idea, Soundwave," Megatron said. "Rung, won't you let Soundwave escort you to the mess? I'm sure we can find something suitable to your preferences."

Rung favored Megatron with a warm smile, taking his hand and patting it gently. "Of course, my dear. I wouldn't want to distract you while you're at work. But we really _should _make time to catch up. Don't turn your lights out for the night until I've had a chance to make you some tea. I know I have one of those ores you like tucked around here somewhere…"

Megatron extricated himself with painstaking care. "If you insist," he said, weakly. And then, gaze snapping over to where Knockout was making a muffled little noise of delight, he snapped, "Knockout, you—"

"Oh, an excellent idea," Rung said, "I _should_ speak to your primary. I want to make sure you're not throwing your weight around with the medics again." Flashing Knockout a conspiratorial little look, he added, "They're always _so_ quick to clear him when he flashes that gladiator charm, bless their sparks."

Megatron had started to boil. Soundwave rushed to herd everyone off the bridge, shoving none-too-gently at Knockout's back with a data cable until the medic finally broke out of his wide-eyed stupor. He did not stop pushing until they all turned a corner and could no longer see the violet glow of the bridge.

Knockout cleared his throat. "I, ah," he said, "I'm sorry I mistook you for an autobot. I had no idea you were an… associate… of Lord Megatron's."

"I'm afraid I have no idea what an autobot is," Rung said, "but it's quite alright. It's been a very long time since I was in the company of Cybertronians. I left the planet under some duress." He cocked his head thoughtfully. "I had no idea Earth was a site of interest to Cybertron these days."

"Well, ever since _Prime_ got here," Knockout started, but Rung had already begun beaming radiant pleasure from the blue crackle of his chest-window. Soundwave's datacables twitched in their housing. It was not in the Decepticon army's best interest for Optimus Prime to be reacquainted with Rung.

"Orion is here as well?" Rung said. "My goodness this _is_ the little hub now isn't it? I shall have to visit him before he leaves."

"Er," Knockout said. "What were _you_ doing on Earth?"

"Oh, I come by to see my spark brother periodically," Rung said. "He still won't speak to me, he's an awfully sore loser. We don't see eye to eye about most things, but kinship is kinship! One of these days he'll have to come around."

Soundwave's logic unit cast around for a value to substitute for [spark brother] and came up with something that caused him to dump the entire process immediately out of self preservation.

"I _do_ wish he would give up this silly thing and come home," Rung was saying, to Knockout's bemusement.

Soundwave sped up his pace. The mess hall was only a little farther, and then he could shake off Knockout and focus on making Rung as comfortable as possible for the length of his visit. This would engender good will, prevent difficult questions from arising, and also provide Soundwave with the opportunity to have a cup of that tea even Swindle hadn't been able to allocate for him since the war broke out.

Several vehicons looked up in nervous uncertainty as the two officers entered the mess without prelude or warning. Someone fumbled their fuel cube. To the rank and file, of course, Rung was merely an incongruous footnote to the episode. They hurriedly cleared a path to the dispensary, abandoning their own positions in line as Knockout waltzed through.

"How _do_ you know Megatron?" Knockout asked, casting a thoughtful glance back over his shoulder.

Rung grinned. For the first time, in the edges of his expression there was a glint of well-meaning mischief. "Have you ever been to Kaon, dear?"

Knockout frowned. "Sure, a long time ago."

Rung flicked open his hand as if he were casting an incendiary into a well, and all around them white-grey daylight swallowed the Nemesis. Vehicons startled and transformed their weaponry, aiming wildly at nothing but rough-hewn streets.

"How…" Knockout said, twisting back to stare at the orbiting hedonias, at the transparent walkways ribbed like the chests of decaying vertebrates.

A pang of something like nostalgia darkened Soundwave's spark. Standing here once again was as if drinking the memory of lost days in a slow, long sip. Here they had walked, talking of revolution. Here they had listened to the singing in the syk dens, the laughter of laborers swigging engex so thick and bitter it was almost indistinguishable from oil. Cybertron: alive.

All of it revolved around Rung, who was so small and light that he could barely be seen among the heavy frames of miners and load-haulers. Shades of the long dead moved around him, passing through the bodies of the living. The data of the projection was a vid sim, of course, but the method of the projection itself eluded Soundwave.

It was also deeply unusual in that it occupied a full 160 degrees of action, as if Rung indeed had optics in the back of his helm.

Rung stepped out of himself, and left a shade behind. A perfect copy, as insubstantial as all the rest.

"Let's see," said the real Rung, tapping his chin as he considered the glowing grey sky. "This was just after the quake in Nyon, and I had closed up my practice in Rodion to lend aid there at the request of an old friend. We were passing through Kaon en route to the disaster—there was a comet shower the evening we arrived at the city limits—"

The sky glowed, and in the thickness of the atmosphere a thousand blazing pinpricks of fire shown through.

"At this moment a femme on the fourth floor of the oldest bathhouse in the city had just broken her only serving jug—the foreman at the 75thmining shaft won the grand prize in the Pit betting pool and gave the winnings to his protégé, who was courting a conjunx from the next shaft over—they had never seen each other's faces, but they spoke through the ventilation of approaching comets and fine engex—"

With each point of reference, light glowed in the city. A window, above a bath house where Soundwave had once been taken after a successful match for the rare luxury of having gore fully stripped from his joints. A bot under the shade of a sagging lintel, surrounded by crowing friends. A heavy laborer gazing wistfully at a display of fine foreign goods, one clear jug shining like starlight in the grey afternoon.

And then, in the midst of the bustle, bodies streaming away from him: Megatronus.

Once, in the shadows outside a rusted-out service station that had served as their meeting place in Iacon, Soundwave had overheard Orion Pax say in tones of exhausted accusation, "You want to make the whole world another Kaon!"

And indeed, wherever Megatronus went, Kaon seemed to go with him.

The city street moved with Megatronus. It ebbed and waxed around his presence like a great riotous sea, enervated by the force of him. They loved a champion here—_their_ champion, one of their own, once a miner and now a star known as far as Iacon. These were the early days, before the network sponsors turned nervous at the edge of Megatronus' smile and the wind from Iacon began to turn chill.

There was a murmur of uncertainty from the vehicons as they drew back instinctively from the specter of their liege—though he was smaller and more golden then, glowing and scuffed and scarred—and Soundwave registered disharmony from the two eons of Megatron's people. The past leaning in; the present recoiling. The disharmony itself strained his emotional core processor, which struggled to make sense of [n] = -[n]. Wasn't this army as much Megatron's as Kaon had been Megatronus'? Perhaps more? After all, Megatron's scientists had made the vehicons, nearly all of them who yet survived, from the patterns of long dead Kaonites. How could [n^2] = - [n] ?

The specter of Rung leaned over the booth of a textile merchant selling polishing cloths of varying quality. His small leg kicked up as he leaned forward, reaching for something.

A pair of shiny, burly four-wheelers approached Megatronus from the streetside, shoving and kicking their way through the crowd. An old, primal dread pinged down Soundwave's spine. With the spin of a t-cog, those arms would transform back to reveal blistering plasma prods, the echo of their touch crackling even now over Soundwave's memory. No doubt Megatronus had slipped free of the compound again, as he had been wont to do in those days, without the permission of his handlers. Some gladiators joined the compound freely, but there was little freedom within the walls of the compound. You worked for your fuel, you took your bouts, and then one day when your gears were too stripped to be repaired anymore, you were released onto the streets with no payment but your worn-down frame. But it was no worse than mining, if you survived the first fight, and at least you got to see the sun.

Knockout peered past Rung's shoulder. "Why is everyone scattering like that? They're hardly bigger than most of the laborers."

"Hm?" Rung said. He glanced back at Knockout with an expression of vague curiosity. "You know, I have no idea. I suppose it's because they're very rude. It's best to avoid rude people, they can be vexing to the spirit."

The plating of one burly arm rippled back, and a bold of electricity fizzled between the tines of the prod.

Soundwave played the lightning bolt strike from a human cartoon across his visor. Knockout winced at the cracking sound of it.

The two bore down on Megatronus, who stiffened at the sound of their footsteps—anyone, Soundwave knew, who had heard those footsteps echoing in the halls of the Pit would never forget them—and wove away from them in the crowd. Champion that he was, it was not commonly known that Megatronus had never signed up to gladiate. His work contract had been sold from the excavation company to the Pits for barely more than the cost of his components. His first fight, they had shoved him into the ring unarmed, alt-mode stripped from him. It was a death sentence with a price tag. He had been expected to die.

The bubble of the crowd parted between him and the textile merchant. One of the enforcers swung out with his crackling prod—there was a terrible sound of frying circuitry—and Rung's extended leg caught on Megatronus' shin armor and they both staggered and fell as Rung toppled back against him.

"Clumsy," the real Rung observed, with barely concealed delight. One of the vehicons actually offlined their optics.

The jumble of them in the street was all gold and orange as Megatronus smoked and crackled. Rung clambered up onto the broad chest of Megatronus and gave him a concerned look. "Pardon me," said the strangely far-away voice of Rung's remembered self. "Are you alright, my dear?"

The red light of eyes flickered back to life. Megatronus pinched two fingers around Rung's dorsal kibble and lifted him. Rung hung suspended in the air, absently brushing himself off, while Megatronus inspected him narrowly. "Am _I_ alright?" the gladiator echoed.

Rung dropped, feline graceful, and landed square on the pavement. "You have to be more careful," he said, "If you fell on your t-cog the wrong way, you could grievously injure your ability to transform. I was just telling Adaptus, the other millennia, I was saying—"

At that moment, the enforcers spun back all their plating and began to advance on Megatronus.

The setting of this event was slowly becoming familiar to Soundwave, one data point at a time. The pattern of scuffing, and the electrical damage—a match presented itself from the files of memory. This was the day that Megatronus had come back late into the dark cycle, smelling of expensive spices and a delicate exhaust that Soundwave would later come to associate with libraries, and not a single enforcer had said a word about his absence. And not long after, Megatronus would tell the rest of them—

In the street, standing over the prone Megatronus, Rung turned towards the sound of electrical crackling and all at once his delicate features flattened into cold disapproval.

"That was extremely rude," he said, and marched right up to them, although they were head and shoulders taller than he. "Those components were not meant for bullying other bots. If you can't use them responsibly, you shouldn't use them at all."

And then he caught the prod behind the tines and _ripped_ it loose from the forearm housing, with a blast of oil and bubbling fuel lines. The enforcer let out a howl that nearly shook the gravel on the pavement, staggering back, clutching his mutilated arm. Deep inside the housing it was sparking and gurgling with liquid, atmosphere corroding pieces of machinery which were never meant to see the light of day. Rung considered him for a moment, expressionless, and then gently pushed the broken weaponry into the grip of the second enforcer.

"That's _impossible_," Knockout was saying. "That component was part of the support structure for the entire limb, the force necessary to remove it like that—you pulled out the _entire_ _strut_—"

The memory of Rung had already returned to Megatronus' side, popping a medical panel and slipping one of his own slim plugs into the smallest of the four ports. All around the mess, Vehicons descended into panic. Several of them raced for the door, unwilling to watch any more of the scene. It was like seeing someone with their spark out, only it wasn't just someone; it was the fierce and terrible master of the Decepticon army, scourge of a thousand battle fields. Even Soundwave found the moment uncomfortably intimate, for all that he had many times before seen Megatron in states of comparative vulnerability. Megatronus, sprawled on the ground, glared at the smaller bot.

It was the open street that made it all so difficult to reconcile. The open street and Rung's reassuring hand, patting the spiked pauldron of a gladiator twice his size.

"You're suffering from malnourishment," Rung observed. "Your self-repair has been struggling to patch a wound on your lower back for several vorns—your titanium reserves are almost completely dry."

Megatronus' gaze darted furiously from one side of the street to the other, and it was obvious that he was thinking about the consequences of such a weak spot becoming common knowledge. Knowing Kaon, someone was already comming their bookie to lay bets on the next match.

"There is rarely a surplus of nourishment in the Pits," Megatronus said, slowly but clearly. "Most of the _entertainers_ are concealing similarly substantive wounds."

Ah. Ah yes. To shift the focus from himself, and to encourage the speculation of fans against his own rivals—it was not much of a consolation, but it would mitigate the brunt of the unfriendly attention.

Rung disconnected his diagnostic plug. "I can see I'll need an office," he said. In the projection of the memory, the third story window of an old spire lit up, and Rung turned to consider it from the street. "That will do," he said.

There was a creak as Megatronus attempted to lever himself up, his vents spitting heavy smoke. Rung whirled on him, skittering back over to grip his shoulder.

"Oh no," Rung said, "let me," and then he took Megatronus by the hand and pulled him upright, as if the entire smoking gladiator weighed barely as much as a fine vase.

Knockout leaned in close to Soundwave and whispered, "Is he messing with us?"

_Negative_, Soundwave replied over the officers' comm channel. _Rung: capable._

The real Rung, slightly brighter than the world he projected, was watching the streetside exchange with a profound fondness. As the memory of himself stepped back from the groaning hulk of Megatronus, he stepped forward into the projection. One set of hands synced with another—the body of one Rung swallowed the other, and then there was only a single glowing orange bot in the center of the whole dim world, the axis which a moment spun upon.

"Come with me," Rung told Megatronus, his voice strangely resonant, a harmonic with himself.

Megatronus, narrow eyed and pulled in tight against himself, said, "To where?"

Rung grinned at him. "To have tea," he said.

In perfect harmony with the projection, Rung flung open his fingers again, and then the city street streamed away like the white ribbons of stars dissolving into an interstellar launch, the stone and cement and market booths nothing but trails of data. A warp of some kind, although not one that a living mech should have.

All at once, they were inside of a dusty third story office.

Soundwave turned despite himself, fascinated to see the place in such an unlived in state. During his many visits it had always been lit with a warm rosy light, polished and shining like nothing in Kaon ever was, full of intricate knick-knacks displayed lovingly, regardless of their intrinsic value. A lump of volucite carved in the shape of a turbofox by a miner lucky enough to have found a vein in his excavation; a plate of etched steel so old that the etching was almost unrecognizable; an exquisitely forged set of stationary; ceramics, textiles, frivolous puzzles.

Now it was only dust and the plain expanse of a cheap desk, the shelves empty of their future citizenry. It wasn't until Soundwave turned back that he realized that Megatronus had not left the projection at all. In fact, the gladiator was hunched in the corner, talons digging into the floor, ready to strike at the first sign of a threat.

"A bit of a fixer-upper," Rung said, observing the dust with a critical eye.

"What kind of a trick is this?" Megatronus growled. "If you would have me dead, approach me head on like a warrior!"

But Rung was not paying him any attention. He was fiddling with the solvent tap at the back of the room, the slightly oxidized copper of a brew pot already settled at his elbow. "Give me a moment," he said, as the tap finally gurgled to life. "I have a titanium ore that will substantially ease that gnawing in your tanks."

Gently, Soundwave stepped forward and tapped Rung on the shoulder. His finger fizzled against the thin layer of hard light, and both the projection and the real Rung looked up simultaneously, straight into his visor. They smiled.

"No. Let us not linger in memory," they both said, together, and even as Megatronus narrowed his eyes in confusion, the projection shattered into a storm of glowing motes.

That was the same morning then. The very same. And that evening Megatronus would return to the Pit smelling of expensive spices to announce that he had found a patron.

All around the mess, decepticons shook their heads and ruffled their plating, unnerved and blinded by the return of familiar violet light in the Nemesis. An ache of longing suffused Soundwave, as the same cold light washed over him too. Although those days had been hard and cruel, in the midst of the pitiless scrabbling there had been moments of almost intoxicating freedom. A visit to Rung's office, a cup of tea—a willing audial, truth without fear of repercussions.

In a way, the bubble of Rung's office had given rise to the entire revolution. Within its walls, they had learned how to speak their anger until it became the rumble of a planetary cataclysm, and Megatron—who had once been sold to die in an arena for the crime of having been found with literature in his possession—had bloomed like the scorching fire of an incendiary, taking all of Kaon with him into the light.

Anyone who was afraid of Rung because of his improbable strength, or his inexplicable abilities, was afraid of the wrong power entirely.

"What _is_ he?" Knockout muttered. He had pulled himself close against Sounwave's side, as if in his bewilderment he had forgotten that Soundwave was the very instrument of espionage which had destroyed Airachnid not long before.

They watched Rung putter over at the dispensers together, and they watched as he accepted a shaking cube of energon from one of the soldiers. Soundwave wondered how to quantify that which he only barely understood: the living core of their homeworld, the transcendence of physical form, the dreamy eons of a geologic timescale. All of that, and also the sight of titanium ore dissolving into warm solvent as a bright voice hummed something at the window.

When Rung had left Kaon for good, he had taken much of the city's warmth with him. Soundwave remembered quite clearly the look on the smaller bot's face as Megatron—only Megatron, by then—had whirled on him in a snarl, denying his need for-

_Your tea, or your endless prattle, or your talk of compassion! The only compassion in this universe is the mercy of the kill!_

They had been in the office above the city, the three of them, as Megatron's pacing left splotches of another mech's oil across the floor. It was rare for Soundwave to accompany Megatron on one of these visits, but that night he had not dared allow Megatron to roam the streets without assistance. On Rung's desk, the hardcopy of his new poem lay where he had scattered it, spattered with his oily fingerprints.

_If you cannot grasp this, _Megatron had growled, _you're of no more use to me than that wretched traitor Pax. In fact - if you aren't with me__, oh patron of mine__, you may consider yourself my enemy as well!_

The terrible blaze of Rung's chest panel was what Soundwave remembered clearest. The rest of the memory file had corrupted even as it came into existence—what was said in the growing rattle of ceramic on the shelves, the lurch of the building shaking at its bolts, the look on Megatron's face. What remained was only blue light, and the terrible vertigo. In that moment there was more than dumb mortal fear, more than spilt fuel and oil and pain: there was an enormity that might consume and incinerate them as effortlessly as the screaming smelter of the sun.

The next thing he could recall was standing on the street of Kaon, looking up at the place where the spire office had been. Only empty sky remained, and the flash of a passing aircraft against the night.

A cube of fuel clinked against Soundwave's forearm. When he reset his optical feed, Rung was standing in front of him offering the drink.

He took it numbly, thinking of efficiency, of fuel reserves. He must fuel to work. He must work to end this. The mantra that had carried Soundwave through the last several hundred years unspooled itself again in his core processor: the war will be over soon. Just a little longer. Just a little more.

The energon glowed dully, earthy and unappetizing. In Kaon, it had rarely been fine quality, but it had always tasted like home.

Rung patted his hand. "Come and sit, my dear," he said. "I think you will find that everything, eventually, works out alright. There is always time for tea."

Soundwave looked up. He supposed that ultimately it was not only Kaon that Rung had left.

Cybertron was dark. The Well was dark. And out among the alien stars, alone, Rung walked in memory.


	2. The heavenly visitation of Building F

Cybertron.

A long time ago.

Orion ducked beneath an outstretched arm, only barely squeezing through the space between two enormous body guards. Orion Pax, data clerk, had some height to him but it was a gangly height, nothing like the boulder heaviness of security and enforcement class, and the stands that he had wandered into now were thick with those bruiser types, keeping a kind of informal perimeter between the lower ranks and their masters.

"Oh, um," Orion said, tucking his arms tight against his chassis "sorry, sorry-I'm just trying to get to the door over there, if you don't mind-"

A hand the size of a smaller tank closed tight around Orion's wrist. His whole body jerked to a stop even as he tried to keep going, pedes skidding out from underneath him, so that he hung from the inexorable grip like a toy, escape just beyond his reach.

"What're you doin up here?" growled the voice attached, presumably, to the fist around his arm.

Orion looked longingly at the door to the dark hallway, which with the grace of Primus would bring him away from the spectator stands and down into the back of house, where his contact had arranged to meet him.

"You better not be causing trouble," the guard warned him, lifting him up even a little higher off the ground, "tryina solicit the bosses or nothing."

The nearest guard, more streamlined than most of his fellows, turned halfway from his current post and gave Orion an unimpressed once over. "He's data class, Scourge," the flight frame said, "if you shake him like that his wrist is likely to pop off."

"I oughta throw him into the lugnut gallery," Scourge growled. "Sneakin around like some kinda spy, tryina get a peak at the boss. You conjunx hunting, sparklefingers? Think you're gonna flash those fancy hips and get a date?"

Orion felt an uncomfortable sudden urge to cover his pelvic joints. "No, sir, I assure you," he started to say, only to be shaken roughly enough that his wrist began to ping him with dire stress alerts. His pedes swung desperately over the ground, searching for some kind of purchase. "I," he tried, but the guard just shook him harder.

And in the midst of all this joint-popping, processor-dizzying little show of force, there was a quiet clearing of an intake and a polite tap against Orion's thigh.

"I don't mean to interrupt," a bright new voice interrupted, "but are you quite well, there?"

Scourge froze. Standing a head shorter than him and sucking thoughtfully at the coating of a candystick was a small copper mech, maybe a two wheeler. If Orion had to guess, he would say the bot was a remarkably old model, significantly older than anyone Orion had ever met. The small mech was a strange mixture of archaic unfashionable features and fine, detailed workmanship. His optics were hidden behind some sort of augmenter, goggled as if with scopes.

"Quite well, thank you," Orion said, "except that my wrist casing is going to tear in four kliks."

"Oh, that won't do," the small mech said. "I'm sure our friend here will be more than happy to set you down before anything unfortunate transpires. Won't you, dear?"

Scourge shot an uneasy look at something in the crowd, possibly the location of his master. "I can't just let the little guy run around in the private box, mister," he protested, optics zooming uneasily. "He could-he-well I don't know, but you don't wanna give hooligans the run of the place!"

"Not to worry," the little mech said. "If anything is amiss I shall surely take care of it. Orion, my dear, why don't you walk with me. The show is about to start."

The floor rose up to meet Orion's feet. His wrist gave a scorching throb the moment Scourge released it, as if the sudden lack of pressure was somehow worse than the dangling had been.

"Don't let him give you lip, sir," Scourge said, with a peculiarly protective scowl. "He's a troublemaker, mark my words."

"Excellent," the small mech said, and took Orion's hand. "We shall get along splendidly."

Dizzied, Orion allowed himself to be pulled along, hunching slightly to accommodate the height of his savior, who was moving quite briskly through the crowd. It wasn't so much that people saw them coming and parted for them, but rather that the small mech seemed to effortlessly find the gaps in space lined up before him in an easy, fluid path.

"Forgive me," Orion said, "but have we met? Do you know me?"

"Oh yes. Yes, we meet many times."

"I don't-I don't know your name," Orion said, alarmed by the thought that he might have met this mech and forgotten him. He was usually great with names. He met very few people, working as he did in the depth of the archives, but he remembered each author and each biography with almost personal familiarity.

"You may call me Rung," the mech said. He didn't seem at all bothered.

They ended up in a box seat, suspended half over the pit of the lugnut gallery, not large but exceedingly comfortable. Orion hovered at the door, seeing only the beautiful couch where Rung was already seated. There were no low seats, no cushions on the floor. Perhaps Rung was so highly ranked that anyone who attended him necessarily sat on the bare floor. As mid-caste, Orion usually took the mid-seat when attending superiors, but all of his superiors were only a rank or two above himself.

"Sit down," Rung said. "You do want to see the fight, don't you?"

Rung reached for an intricately detailed pot on the single low table, whorls of ceramic raised all around its almost perfect sphere, and set it down inside a brazier to warm. It was an old fashioned apparatus, old enough that Orion had never seen anything like it outside of archival recordings.

"Which side of the table do you want me to sit on, sir?" he asked, trying to figure out the best way to avoid having guards called on him again for impertinence.

Rung patted the cushion next to himself absently. "Will you grab a cup for us both from the cabinet?" he asked, as he extracted some kind of ore from a foil wrapper and dunked it into the pot.

He wanted Orion to sit there?

Orion's hands shook enough that his fingers made a tapptapptapp against the glass of the cabinet door. Who had Rung mistaken him for? Someone else named Orion? Someone who looked just like him? Someone with his name and his frame who was somehow high enough caste to sit next to a mech who could afford a box seat at the Kaon Arena ?

He set each of the cups down on the table slowly, gripped with the all consuming fear that he would shatter one of them in his shaking hands.

The brazier pinged. Rung picked up the pot and turned it over, pouring out shimmering metallic tea from the spout in the lid.

"Are you sure you don't want me to pour-" Orion asked, hands fluttering nervously as he forced himself not to intervene. It was the host's job to pour, he knew that much about propriety, but the pot looked so heavy and Rung's limbs were so slim.

"Nonsense," Rung said. And indeed, he didn't seem to be having any trouble with it, heavy as it looked. "Come and sit down."

Orion went and sat down. He kept his knees closed tight together and folded his hands in his lap. He had begun to have a faint idea that maybe Rung also thought he was a conjunx hunter, and he was frightened at the prospect of having to turn down someone so obviously wealthy. He was afraid that he might have already indicated agreement without realizing. He was afraid that there might be Expectations.

Rung passed him his cup, and then he leaned forward in his seat. "Look!" he said, peering down into the arena. "They're starting the opening maneuvers."

Orion followed his gaze down to the arena. The oil-soaked sand glittered darkly in the blistering light of the roof above them all, a strange and slightly blue light that made everything shine with a faint expectation of energon.

The parade of gladiators, swords up for the cheering of the crowds, glittered with that same blue sheen. Down below, in the lugnut gallery, the common rabble screamed and shouted for their favorites. Puffs of smoke went up in the colors of champions as fans lit off homemade smoke crackers, red and green and - lavender-

"Ah, there's Megatronus," Rung said, just as the charge of Orion's spark leapt wildly. There, indeed, was Megatronus, golden and glowing, a scowl that could stop lightning halfway to the planet and turn it aside. His piercing eyes scanned the crowd, and landed directly on Rung's viewing box. Orion's vents stuttered.

"Wave to him," Rung said, as Megatronus went still with what might have been surprise. Although he was far below, too far to see clearly, Orion felt the champion's gaze fall squarely on his inadequate self.

Hesitantly, Orion lifted a hand.

Megatronus stared a moment more, and then at last, lifted his sword in something between a warning and a salute.

Orion sat back shakily in his seat. "I was supposed to meet him downstairs, after the match," he said. "I'm not supposed to be up here."

"I know," Rung said, sipping his tea. "He's been pacing about it all morning."

Orion froze. He carefully tallied up the events of the day thus far. "You're his patron?" he said. "I knew he had one-but-"

It had been obvious that Megatronus had a patron, even before they began corresponding. Most of the top tier gladiators did; without financial support, unlucky competitors worked match after match just to keep themselves repaired and fueled, until they were too battered and broken up to compete anymore, and subsequently were turned out into the streets. And even if that hadn't been the case, no one could talk in public like Megatronus did without having someone powerful at their back.

"Do you like the games?" Rung asked, at least pretending to be more interested in the arena below than the moment of revelation Orion was experiencing. "I know you're not here to watch, really, but you might find it illuminating."

Rung's mouth twitched up, and then down, and the delicate mechanisms of his lenses spun down before drawing back. His opticals were the green-blue of glass formed by lightning over the acid wastes, a harvest of sea glass washed into tide pools for urchins and outcasts to find.

"You will see," Rung said. "Wherever he goes, some part of Megatronus is, I think, still here in this arena."

Down below them, the main stable of champions went through their scripts of salutes and honors, the usual opening ceremonies as Orion understood them. A violet glass vial glittered in the hands of the emcee. The circling camera drones zeroed in on it, getting so close that the fizzle of charge within it was even visible. Innermost energon, Orion thought, almost certainly. But from whom?

"This used to be the part where they would dedicate the fallen of the field to Mortilus," Rung told him. "Of course they don't do that anymore, what with the Heresy, which is for the best. Censere never liked the sport. Terrible waste of life, he always called it."

The master of ceremonies painted the mouths of each gladiator in turn, leaving violet streaked across the metal in uneven stripes. The gory glow of it, smeared thin across Megatronus' mouth, gave his whole severe face a strange and savage beauty.

"I, on the other hand," Rung went on, "find something compelling about the whole thing, I'll admit. Life wasn't made to die, per say, but it was made to struggle. To live both fiercely and gently. To climb for the light."

Orion felt Megatronus watching him again, shining and streaked with gore, sword in hand. Although he had no way of knowing it at that time, he would remember this vision of Megatronus long after the champion had left behind both his name and his arena for still more stark and terrible realms. He would remember it as an omen, but not one he'd had the foreknowledge necessary to decipher.

He would remember the purple mouth, deadly and beautiful, and think of what Rung meant when he said that wherever Megatronus went, the pit went with him.

* * *

Earth.

Now.

Spring was blooming, in some far sector of the globe. Earth was always blooming in one sector or another, the longitudes alight with starbursts of delicate plant flesh, petals so delicate that not even the smallest human hands could touch without bruising them. It was not blooming in Jasper Nevada, but the groundbridge carried the wisp of pollen in the air as Optimus returned from scouting an odd frequency, filling the sparse military base with something exotically green.

Rafael, on the mezzanine, sneezed.

"Ratchet," Optimus said, "what is the nature of the hubbub in question?"

In fact, the central room of the base seemed almost placid - on the tiny television set, young Rafael and Bumblebee were engaged in a game of speed simulation, Ratchet was at his station with the ground bridge affixing some new auxiliary relay, and overall there was peace in the hangar.

Ratchet hmphed.

"Won't be quiet for long," he said. "Not once Smokescreen gets back from giving the tour."

"Tour?" Optimus ran through a series of possible scenarios that would result in both an unexpected visitor to the base and Ratchet's lack of concern with it. "Has Agent Fowler brought us another human ally to confer with?"

"I wish that was all," Ratchet grumbled. He waved vaguely with the soldering iron in his hand. "It's that flaky little so-and-so that bankrolled Megatron back in the day. Rang, or whatever."

Optimus froze. His plating slicked down close to his protoform with a clack that had both Bumblebee and Rafael swiveling in their seats to look at him.

"When did Rung arrive?" Optimus asked, softly.

Bumblebee and Rafael exchanged two different versions of the same worried look. "Um," said Rafael, "about an hour ago? Smokescreen and Bumblebee were picking me up because my house is - loud, right now -"

_Smokescreen [security class] picked up [completed/isolated incident] open frequency transmission,_ Bumblebee explained. _We intercepted [completed/isolated incident/observed fact] transmission source at interstate exit 309B._

"He said it was kind of like someone shouting hello from the other end of a valley," Rafael added. "An open channel. Like you all used to do in the old days? Smokescreen went in a little, um, hot-"

_Smokescreen [security class][verification needed] slammed into Rung [guest/unknown class] 70mph,_ Bumblebee clarified._ No attempt was made to identify faction prior to impact._

"Rung was really nice about it though," Rafael said, wincing slightly. "Actually when Smokescreen hit him, Smokescreen was the one who got flipped, so no harm done, I guess. They're in the back of the base, looking at the armory. Smokescreen found out he doesn't have any integrated weapons so…"

_J-turn [Forward/Reverse 180] 60mph,_ Bumblebee commented.

"...Equal enthusiasm in any direction," Rafael agreed.

For a second, Optimus could only marvel at the synchronicity of two young people, each alien to the other, finishing each other's sentences as easily as spark-twins. But he resisted the urge to comment - pointing it out would only embarrass them.

"Anyway," Rafael said, coughing into his fist in what was apparently a polite gesture of acknowledgement, despite most human bodily functions being considered impolite as far as Optimus was aware. "He didn't look like any kind of Decepticon we'd ever seen, so we commed Ratchet and Ratchet said he was fine, basically, so we brought him back here. It's been fine so far. He's awfully nice."

"Rafael, Bumblebee," he said. "Do you have any idea who Rung is?"

Bumblebee and Rafael shared another uneasy glance, a silent exchange quite easy to translate as: did you know anything? No, did you?

_Ratchet [medical class/officer] designated subject as former patron of Megatronus [casteless/hostile],_ Bumblebee said, vouchsafed that subject is not currently affiliated.

"Rung was that to Megatronus at one time, yes," Optimus said. "But before that - aside from that-"

"Upbupbup," Ratchet cut in, "don't get them all started on your superstitious conspiracy theories, Optimus. They don't know enough history to know you're talking mysticism, not fact."

"I assure you," Optimus said, patiently, for possibly the four thousandth time, "I am no more interested in mysticism than I am in ignoring the facts as I am aware of them."

"Who's talking about facts?" interrupted Smokescreen, who bounded into the hangar eagerly, a polishing cloth working between his hands. "Sorry, I was showing Rung how to use the washrack, the earth plumbing kinda stumped him. What's going on?"

Smokescreen and Bumblebee and Rafael, these young individuals - he could remember being so young, and that made it all the more disorienting - he'd been barely more mature than the oldest of them, when he had gone down into the pits to see Megatronus for the first time - when he had met Rung himself -

"You spent time with Alpha Trion," Optimus said, turning to Smokescreen. "Do you know anything of the Guiding Hand Heresy?"

"Here we go," Ratchet sighed.

"The Heresy is a matter of fact," Optimus gently countered. "In Cycle 1001, vorn 42, the Diocese of Primus issued an edict that anyone who mentioned the Guiding Hand henceforth would be charged with blasphemy and subjected to personality adjustment. It is a matter of record."

"Sure, I believe it's a matter of record," Ratchet said, "but do I believe there was a conspiracy within the church to oust an actual God, that apparently they knew existed? Optimus, be reasonable. The cardinals were always jockeying with each other for power. Almost certainly someone's pet cult got too ambitious, and the others jumped on it like a pack of starving scraplets."

Smokescreen, who had been rapidly tapping his jaw, snapped his fingers suddenly in a borrowed earth gesture that nonetheless managed to derail Ratchet and Optimus' long familiar argument quite cleanly.

"I do remember this one," he said. "The idea that Primus is actually five mechs, not one big reactor core at the center of the planet. Alpha Trion used to mention one of them sometimes. We were in pretty close quarters there at the end. Sometimes I heard him praying."

"Primus is a power source at the center of the planet," Ratchet said impatiently. "Or - was. But it's not mythological, it's scientific. All of the functions of the core are - were - documented by geologists and all walks of natural scientists. The functions attributed to Primus exist, but that doesn't make Primus a person. Attributing intentionality to the laws of nature is a superstitious fallacy."

Rafael, seated in his tiny chair, raised his hand. Optimus looked at him, and then glanced at Bumblebee for clarification.

_Human [race] custom,_ Bumblebee said. _Rafael [data class/alien] is waiting for permission to speak._

Optimus pointed at Rafael. "Yes, my young friend, what would you like to say?"

Rafael lowered his hand. "What are the Guiding Hand?" he asked. "Are they like gods, or more like saints, maybe?"

Optimus frowned. Ratchet threw up his hands and pointedly went back to his work, his soldering iron flaring to life.

"The story goes," Optimus said, carefully, "that when the planet was young and not yet cooled from the first great casting, Primus burst forth into the guiding hand, entities of enormous power. Each of the five have a sphere of influence, areas in which their wisdom or intercession might be sought by mundane mecha. My linguistic index is suggesting both Bodhisattva and avatar, but I am not certain as to the colloquial applications."

"So they… are Primus," Rafael said, "but Primus still exists?"

"Primus Himself was too…" Optimus searched for the word, "too large, too deathless and ancient to understand our lives. We are to his infinitude a kind of cascading single life, none of us individually noticeable to his gaze."

"It's fine if you don't get it," Ratchet called over his shoulder, doing a poor job of pretending not to be involved. "Our planet had millions of years of uninterrupted academic stupidity to come up with this nonsense."

"Oh, no," Rafael said. He looked almost embarrassed. "Actually around here, we have something kind of like that too."

"Okay," Smokescreen said, brows furrowed, "but what does all that ancient stuff have to do with - Rung!"

Optimus turned, just in time to see his old acquaintance strolling into the hangar, clean and shiny and observing every inch of the architecture with bemused interest.

"Hello again Smokescreen," Rung said, his hands folded behind his back. "Thank you for your hospitality. I've had a chunk of meteor stuck in my rotor cuff since Europa. I'm feeling much fresher now."

"No sweat, buddy," Smokescreen said, ushering the smaller bot into the gathering. "Sorry again for running you down like that. I guess I still need to learn not to think with my accelerator. Let me introduce you to the boss!"

Rung and Optimus met gazes. A shiver passed through the matrix caged in his chest, a tremor not of rising dread exactly, but of something already and always present. If there was a way to make Ratchet feel this tremor, both awful and sublime, there would be no more long, circuitous academic arguments between them about the nature of divinity.

"We know each other," Optimus said. "Rung, we are honored at your visit."

Rung smiled at him, and as ever, behind the expressionless glass lenses, it was impossible to know what he was smiling at. Blank glass and a gently bemused air - he was unreadable, pleasant but somehow uncanny.

"Orion Pax," he said. "So good to see you again, dear. And haven't you grown into a fine mech?"

Ratchet made another hmmph.

"Will you be staying long on the planet?" Optimus asked, ignoring both Ratchet's ill humor and the younger bots' goggling.

"Oh," Rung said, "perhaps a while longer. It does seem to be quite the social hub, and I've been alone on the starways for such a long time. But I shouldn't like to linger where I'm not welcome."

Rung absently swiped a drop of solvent from his jaw, pensive. Optimus had a sense then that Rung had perhaps already made contact with Megatron. There was something painfully nostalgic about imagining them together again, their familiar mismatching shapes against a backdrop of another barrack, after so much else had changed irrevocably. It was a bitter sweetness, and Optimus could not have said if the bitterness or the sweetness would cause him more pain.

In all the fear and excitement of those early days, before the Primacy shattered all their fervent golden dreams, Rung had been a stable touchstone among all the uncertainty. Always a little removed, always in the periphery, as easily forgotten as a purring heater in the settling chill of autumn - and yet his absence had a shape and hardness of its own, like the bite of winter.

Optimus offered Rung his open hand. "Please," he said, "why don't you allow us to accommodate you for a while?"

-0-

Later, after the other children and other autobots had all made their appearances and introductions - after the hubbub Ratchet had predicted, and the dreamy, ever-unpredictable conversations Rung took with him wherever he went - Smokescreen found Optimus lingering in the armory. He had not been accomplishing any particular task there, in all honesty. It had just felt difficult to be around so much noise and curiosity and Rung, small and unassuming in their midst, emitting that thrum of resonance as deep and strange as the void of outer space.

"You never finished explaining," Smokescreen said, "whatever you were explaining about Rung."

Optimus avoided his expectant gaze. "You might ask him yourself just as easily."

"Oh, he disappeared a little bit ago," Smokescreen said. "It was totally wild, he like, warped out of here or something, Miko had a fit about it. I dunno when he'll be back, actually, but that's not really what I wanted anyway. I wanna know what you were gonna say."

Smokescreen sidled a little closer, trying not to seem too eager.

Knowledge of fact, of history, is the right of any individual. The truth is not proprietary. Even so, it is hard not to worry about what individuals will make of the truth. Smokescreen especially is young and still so malleable, still so gung-ho about the whole war in a way that no one has been for an eon.

"The Guiding Hand was not a cultist's fantasy," Optimus told him. "There were gods, at one time, and they walked among us."

"I thought you were gonna say that!" Smokescreen said, bouncing on his pedes. "So what was Rung, like, some kind of exiled priest? A secret church criminal! Oh, oh, he transported fugitives! No? Don't tell me he was an inquisitor, I was just getting to like the little guy-"

"Smokescreen," Optimus said.

The young mech flicked and apologetically settled his doorwings. "Sorry sir," he said.

"There were five members of the hand," Optimus said. "Their titles and functions were commonly known at one time, but their personal names, whatever those might have been, were thought lost to time."

"Okay," Smokescreen said, slowly.

"There was Epistimus, archive of all things," Optimus went on, abruptly taken with a nostalgia for his own youth, learning the forbidden names from the comfort of his mat at his master's feet. "Adaptus, blessed with infinite shapes; Solomus, the All Wise; Mortilus, Death-Bringer; and the Lightsmith, Primus, First-Made."

Optimus gently closed the casing of the broken bombardment weapon he had been considering before Smokescreen arrived. In the curved shell of the casing, his own lights were thin blue bands, without shape.

"Ratchet told you all that Rung was Megtronus' patron?" At Smokescreen's nod, Optimus asked, "Did he tell you what that meant?"

"Uhh, not really," Smokescreen said. "I figured he was Megatron's boss or something."

"Not precisely. He paid all of the housing fees for Megatronus, as well as his stipend for personal recreation. He paid for tournament entry fees and travel fees, whatever was needed. And he shielded Megatronus from political reprisal by attaching his own name to the writing that a casteless gladiator published."

Smokescreen frowned. "That's a lot of stuff. What did he get out of it?"

"That is harder to say. Most patrons found that sponsoring a gladiator elevated their status among their peers, or at least made them more interesting party guests. But Rung never seemed to play those high society games…"

In fact, he was almost always in his office above Kaon, waiting to receive guests like a magistrate receiving supplicants. That had been the odd and at times alarming thing about Rung: he was carelessly generous, as likely to answer requests for aid with tourist trinkets as gold and priceless raw gems. More than once, someone had walked dazed down from his office with a gift they had no idea how to sell or use, with perhaps deep red crystalline peaks cradled in their cupped hands. Wiser mechs had kept their gifts secret, investing whatever profit they turned into better repairs or safer housing; the less wise had ended up bled out in dive bars and grubby alleys, hands empty and subspaces poured out on the floor.

Meanwhile, the local fences in Kaon quickly became adept at placing lost treasures into new and eager homes.

"He had immense resources at his disposal," Optimus said. "We never understood where they came from. He was forever surrounded by curious and beautiful things, and none of us could ever tell where any of it came from. When we asked him about it, he would only say that he was very old, and he had always been very good at keeping ahold of things."

Smokescreen, who had been narrowing his optics more and more over the course of this explanation, had begun to tap his thumb against his hip.

"The fifth finger of the guiding hand," Optimus said. "The Lightsmith, first-made. That is Rung. That's who he has always been, long before you or I were a flicker of light in the bottom of the Well."

Smokescreen's finger stopped tapping.

"He's Primus?" Smokescreen said. "Primus was Megatron's patron?"

"That is my understanding, yes."

"What?" Smokescreen shouted, and then embarrassed with himself, clapped a hand over his mouth. Behind his clutching fingers, he muttered, "What? Megatron?"

"It was all long before the war began," Optimus said. "At that time, none of us knew what depths of cruelty lay beneath Megatron's utopian vision."

"Yeah, maybe you didn't know," Smokescreen said, "but he's Primus! You can't tell me he didn't know, it's his job to know!"

"I don't know," Optimus said, shaking his head slowly. "I find that raking through the coals of history often only ends with melted fingertips."

Smokescreen didn't heed the implied advice. "I spent all day taking him around, and he's the one who let all this happen?"

"It is more complicated than that," Optimus said, although he was unsure how to explain what exactly it was. "The war is something we're all culpable for, all of us who lived before - if it wasn't, Megatron would simply have been a madmech howling into the void."

"Take me to him," Smokescreen demanded.

Optimus frowned. "While I respect that this is difficult information to parse," he said, "it is not my place to facilitate confrontations between my soldier and uninvolved neutrals."

"But he is involved!" Smokescreen said. "He's as involved as any of us! Look, I want answers, and he's got them. If he's everything you think he is, doesn't he owe us some answers?"

Optimus looked at his soldier, still so young in a way that even Bumblebee now was not. He had always sensed something pure and fierce underneath Smokescreen's youthful clumsiness. In that moment, the bright and relentless thing shone through like a light burning beneath scattered rubble.

"Very well," Optimus said. "If you believe it is necessary, I will find him for you."

-0-

They found him in a garden, on the other side of the groundbridge, wandering among the trees. Most of them were as tall as he was, flowering in white and purple clusters. One in particular seemed to have caught his interest, where the white along the branches was interspersed with bursts of something else. At the base of the tree, a vine climbed the trunk and disappeared into the boughs, twisted so tight that the bark had started to grow into and around it.

Optimus hung back, among the garden's smaller residents, well aware that his interference would not be appreciated.

"So you're God," Smokescreen said, crossing his arms.

Rung lifted his hand to the highest branches of the tree, where the vine had climbed deep into the foliage. The flowers that grew there were the same coppery orange as Rung's chassis, whole clusters of them barely as wide as his fingertip.

"In a manner of speaking," Rung said, without turning.

Smokescreen tightened his jaw. "So if you're God, then why's all this happening?" he demanded, gesturing sharply at everything around them. "Huh? Millions of years of war? Arcee's dead partner? Our homeworld bombed to radioactive slag?"

Rung drew his white fingers through the glimmering blossoms. "Isn't this planet lovely?" he said, instead of answering. "Astonishing, how something so lovely could grow out of someone so loveless."

Rung snapped one of the tiny flowers off of the vine, bringing it closer to the lenses of his optical scopes. The green glass spun and narrowed.

"I often think there's a kind of morbid synchronicity in it all," he went on. "That the world which held Primus is a smoking corpse, while my brother's world is a riot of life."

Sunlight glowed yellow and green through the leaves of the canopy. There was a shutter flash of red avian wings, as something took flight.

"My world dead. His world alive. Somehow both of us have what the other wanted most desperately."

"But you're here! You're alive! Why didn't you stop it?"

Rung did turn at that point, casting a thoughtful glance over his shoulder. "I can't unmake reality. Your government and your politicians and your caste fanatics had their own grand plans for Cybertron. They had no interest in me or my brethren. Much easier to speak for an unknowable creator locked away in the caverns of the planet, isn't it? Much less convenient to argue with gods who can speak for themselves."

"Yeah, yeah, the Heresy. I heard. So what, you think that means you get to quit?"

"They took Epistimus apart," Rung said, serenely. "First they took his limbs, and then when they tired of his screaming, they took his mouth. And when they could not solve his mysteries, they took his processor from his helm, and they mounted it in a cage, and they called it an artefact. And all the while he was calling to us, begging to return to the Well, until there was only the call that remained."

Smokescreen hesitated, doorwings flicking with barely suppressed discomfort.

"Do you know what an oubliette is?" Rung asked. When Smokescreen didn't answer, he went on, "it is a place you throw people to forget about them. We went into hiding. For a while, long enough to be forgotten. And then when there were few enough who remembered us, we returned to a world shaped in the image of an oubliette. In the pits of that world, generations lived and died in darkness."

Rung turned from the tree, with the flowering vine wound very carefully around his arms.

"After the inquisition, I did try to make the best of it. A day here, a day there. It wasn't enough."

"So you just let the place burn?" Smokescreen demanded.

"On this planet the humans sometimes set fire to the forests on purpose, did you know that?" Rung asked. "But I suppose to the creatures that live in the leaves, it doesn't matter why it's done. Fire is fire."

"Don't compare us to some - some organic worms, okay, we're people with jobs and - and lives, and - we know it when you're hurting us! We want to live!"

"All things strive," Rung agreed, and dropped the coiled vine into Smokescreen's arms. "Isn't it marvelous? The crawlers that eat trash in the gutters, the turbofoxes, the scraplets. They all struggle towards the sun."

"They don't do any of that anymore!" Smokescreen shouted, throwing the vine to the ground. "Because there's nothing living on our planet anymore!"

"Not now," Rung agreed. "No."

"You're the one who put Megatron in power! You were his patron! How could you have let this happen?"

"Megatronus made his own choices."

"You practically handed him the gun he fired at our species!" Smokescreen jabbed a finger at Rung's chest, just short of actually making contact. Optimus winced.

Rung looked down at the accusing finger. Gently, he took Smokescreen's hand in his own and folded it closed. "He wanted the sunlight, and I gave it to him."

Smokescreen recoiled. "Yeah, and look what he did with it!"

"My nature is to make, not to unmake," Rung said. "Primus is not only for the tender and the sweet, but the fierce and the fanged as well."

Smokescreen let out a rough and sharp noise of frustration. His doorwings twitched frantically behind him.

"Didn't your teachers tell you anything?" Rung said, in a darkly amused voice. "Primus is a warrior god."

"It's not fair," Smokescreen said, voice growing ragged. "It's not fair, and what's the point of God if God isn't fair!"

Rung paused. For the first time in the course of this conversation, he seemed lost. After a moment, he bent and - with a soft creaking and whirling of mechanisms - plucked a flowering tendril from the fallen vine. It disappeared into a compartment in his wrist, and then the entire vine was carefully looped around the limb of the tree it had originally come from.

"To attribute intentionality to Nature is a superstitious fallacy," Rung said, at last. "If there is any fairness in these cosmos, it is up to you to find."

Smokescreen made another rough, unhappy noise, and then turned sharply on his heel. "I'm gonna take a walk," he muttered, passing Optimus with his head down and his wings up. "Before I do something to make you look bad."

Optimus watched him stalk through the orchard, until the boughs of flowering trees and the soft curvature of the Earth hid him from sight. He was proud of their youngest soldier for taking a break to let cooler heads prevail.

Rung removed his glasses, pushing his fingers up to smooth the worn creases around his ancient optics. All at once he did look tired, weary even, as if his years of exile had aged him starkly.

"Ah, Orion," he sighed. "I remember when you were so young."

Optimus considered for a moment apologizing on Smokescreen's behalf, but something about the deep, dim burning of Rung's rarely seen eyes told him he needn't bother. Primus was not only for the tender and sweet, after all, but for the fierce and fanged as well.

"They, er," Optimus said. "They no longer call me Orion Pax, Rung. Not for a long time."

"Mm?" Rung said. He looked up. "Why not?"

Optimus shifted uneasily. "When I accepted the matrix," he said, "I was given a Primal Name. By the senate speaker. Surely you knew, it was your… artefact… after all."

For the first time a look of annoyance settled onto Rung's pleasant features. "I had no control over who was given anything, my dear. The senate always had their own little machinations, their cruel plots and plans for their sabotages and schemes. I had already been soundly dismissed by the time you stood before that council."

"Ah," Optimus said, frowning. Of course he had always known a certain amount of political thinking had gone into his appointment as Prime. It still strange and disconcerting to think that the hand of Primus Himself had been helpless in the grip of so many corrupt mortals.

It struck him for the first time how little Rung had ever been able to do for them all. A word of encouragement here, a mangled golden trinket there - a shaft of sunlight in the oubliette, a promise on the tongue of a stranger.

Rung smiled at him, patting him gently on the back of his hand. "Orion Pax," he said, "I knew you in the moment of naming, ten thousand and twenty vorn ago. When you left the all and became one, even then, I knew you. Why should I rename you, when you were already mine?"

Optimus had no answer for that, so instead they stood among the flowering trees, quietly, and allowed the wind to draw petals like fine white meteors past them until the light of the yellow sun began at last to change.


End file.
